Wintertime fishing story # 4

When you have spent a lifetime in the woods you naturally run into a bear now and then. This is the story of the only bear that scared me a little bit. We were backpacking in the smokies and I'd fished this creek before and knew it doubled back on itself so much that if you actually walked straight away from the creek in a few minutes you would hit it much further upstream without having to have waded a bunch of unproductive water. So I'm thrashing around thru the woods and "Oh S%$, there's a bear". A really close bear maybe twenty yards away and he was just standing there looking at me. So I talked to the bear calmly letting him know I was a human. "Hello bear, how are you today?". Nothing, the bear just stands there looking me right in the eyes. We both stand there for what seems like forever. I talk to the bear some more. The bear just stands there. Then suddenly you could see in the bears body language it relax. It lowers it's head eating on something and I take a step or two slowly backwards. It raises it's head and it's got a deer leg in it's jaws! No wonder it wasn't going anywhere. "Good bear, nice bear" as I take a couple more steps backward. Now that the bear has relaxed I slip the camera out of my pocket and snap a couple bad pics as I ease back towards where I came from. Come to think of it the fishing wasn't too bad in those last couple pools...